though all my kingdoms turn to sand
by irnan
Summary: In this family, there is only one Story, and it starts with an orphaned farmboy - no, a slave boy - no, the daughter of an aimless drifter who became a farmer - but anyway. Here it is.
1. shmi skywalker

_this is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** collection of "ten things ficlets" for the various members of the Skywalker family; belongs to my swallows and amazons verse._

**Shmi Skywalker  
**

**1)** She and Qui-Gon become lovers the night before the podrace. He's gentle and sure and puts her needs first, and that more than anything is why she lets Anakin go with him. Long ago, among her mother's people, it was held that if a man could not put a woman's needs first in bed, he might sire a child, but should never be a father to one.

**2)** Her father was an offworlder, a heavyset laughing drifter who became a moisture farmer outside of Mos Eisley and fell in love with the Magh'ran trader who came to his farm to bargain for water early one morning, dressed in black and red with two ceremonial shortswords in a scabbard on her back.

**3)** Sometimes Shmi thinks she remembers the sight of their corpses better than she does their faces.

**4) **She always knows where Anakin is. She can close her eyes and name his location from half a city away throughout his childhood, and it's not until he leaves with Qui-Gon that this ability fails her.

**5)** Her favourite time of day is morning, just before the suns come up, when it's cool enough to work and dim enough to laugh. Sunlight spares no ugliness: starlight hides it all.

**6)** Her name is Skywalker, after the father who had had so little of safety and stability in his life that his wife took his name as a promise and a comfort, but Shmi, unlike him, has no desire to walk anywhere but on the ground. If she dreams at all, she dreams of a city in the canyons, hazy and indistinct, home of her people for generations.

**7)** She told Anakin not to look back. That doesn't stop her hoping he'll disobey her, some time.

**8)** Cliegg is a good man, and a kind man, and Shmi likes him very much after only a few brief meetings, but she doesn't decide to marry him until he steals an hour with her one afternoon and she realises how easily he can make her laugh.

**9)** When she meets Owen, she could almost be glad Anakin is not here, for they would get along like fire and water: Owen so serious, always conscious of how the livelihood of his family is weighing on his shoulders already, and her sharp-tongued boy who loves nothing more than to laugh and be merry, for tomorrow –

**10)** There is so much she has to tell him before she dies. He has to go home. He has to give her body to the fire and scatter her ashes in the way of the People. He has to know of his grandparents, of his grandfather who used to work the land of a farm much like this one, and his grandmother who was trader and warrior and Sister of Asenan. He has to know of his Aniya, his twin sister who perished at birth, whom Shmi can still see dancing in his shadow, clinging to his hand. He has to know what she wants for him: love, happiness, a chance at the kind of comfort and acceptance and laughter that she's found, so late, with Cliegg.

Most of all, he has to know she loves him.


	2. anakin skywalker

_this is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** collection of "ten things ficlets" for the various members of the Skywalker family; belongs to my swallows and amazons verse._

**Anakin Skywalker**

**1)** Obi-Wan is the one who teaches him to read Basic, and Anakin soon realises his new Master thinks he couldn't read at all before that, which does sort of hurt his pride, but he doesn't know how to explain the language of the Magh'ran and his mother's people and Feisal and the seifa and the city in the canyons to Obi-Wan, and anyway he's supposed to be unlearning all of that in order to become a Jedi – they even speak Huttese differently, let alone Magh'ran – so Anakin doesn't try, and Obi-Wan carries on seeing what he expects to see in his new apprentice.

**2)** Shmi used to say "better drowned than duffers, if not duffers won't drown," having heard the expression from her offworlder father, and when she says it she means "learn from your mistakes" but when Anakin hears it he hears "duffers drown, so make sure you're better than them".

**3)** Magh'ran society is matrilineal and was matriarchal, and maybe that's part of why he wants a girl: his daughter would carry on her grandmother's legacy, be an heir to Shmi. Women, girl-children, are important: priestesses, leaders, mother-protectors, holders of the wisdom and knowledge of the People, and their daughter, child of a warrior and a Queen, would be among the greatest of these. Anakin can feel it in his bones.

**4)** Naboo society was and still is matrilineal, but it's never been outright matriarchal, and that's another way that Anakin and Padmé almost meet on the same level but end up just missing each other in the dark. It's another level of disconnect that he can't quite get his head around, as if the way she sees the world is incomplete and his is too much.

**5)** He tells himself he'd do anything to be with her, but the longer the war drags on the more the unease in his gut grows: that feeling that says there are some things he can't, couldn't, shouldn't do, like lie, and hide, and cheat in order to spend time with her.

**6)** It's a horribly disloyal thought, so he pushes that unease away. Whatever it takes. That's what loyalty is.

**7)** Warmth, true warmth, is impossible on Coruscant. And in hyperspace. And during the war. Even Naboo, the hottest part of the day, under the blazing sun that Padmé can't usually stand to be out in, is nothing to Anakin. His blood is just too hot.

**8)** After Mustafar, Palpatine waxes eloquent about midichlorian counts and getting over his guilt and all kinds of things to regain his former strength in the Force, but Vader knows perfectly well what the trouble is: the Force, as Kenobi used to say, is an energy field created by and binding together all iliving/i things, and it makes sense that a rotting mutilated corpse in a life-support suit can no longer touch it.

**9)** There is a istraightforwardness/i to Vader's evil that leaves Palpatine endlessly frustrated: not for his apprentice the joys of torture, of pointless death, of the music of the screaming, of the blood that flows so slow and warm and the dark tangled pathways of a mind twisted beyond recognition. Vader does what he must to carry out his orders by means fair or foul: he controls, he dictates, he murders, he tortures for information, he is ruthless, he signs the death warrants for countless Force sensitive younglings across the galaxy, but he takes no pleasure in any of it, and it is that more than anything that stops him from embracing the Dark Side as fully as his Master has done. A Sith Lord with no ambition or true lust for power is... missing something. Not hatred, that all-important ingredient, for Vader hates with the same passion that he once loved, but something nonetheless.

**10)** On the up side, Palpatine tells himself, at least the man is still a military genius.


	3. mara jade

_this is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** collection of "ten things ficlets" for the various members of the Skywalker family; belongs to my swallows and amazons verse._

**Mara Jade**

1) It doesn't take her long to stop hating Luke, but it does take her a long time to feel anything else for him - other than a certain indebtedness, perhaps.

**2)** "It's up to you," Organa Solo says. "I think if you decide you're ready for it, then you're ready for it."

Mara shrugs and glares down at the baby in her lap - she's already forgotten whether it's Jaina or Jacen, Organa Solo dumped the kid in her arms to shut it up while she was breastfeeding the other one, but that was hours ago. "It's more than just Force techniques and sabre forms," she says.

"It's a way of life," Organa Solo agrees. "I know I'm not ready to make that committment - not yet. I have other responsibilities."

"To the New Republic?" Mara says. Perhaps there's a touch of acidic sarcasm there and perhaps there isn't.

"To other people," Organa Solo says. "People I made promises to long before Luke and I found each other again. Mon Mothma, my Dad..."

Mara can't help it; she starts to laugh. "I'm sorry. But please - tell me you didn't mean Vader with that."

Organa Solo snorts, struggles for a moment to keep her composure, and then bursts out laughing, warm and loud and free.

**3)** A lot of the way Mara sees herself is tied up with her body. As Emperor's Hand, she was nothing more than an extension of Palpatine's will. It makes sense that the first independence she feels is connected to her physical abilities: _I can do this. I can run and shoot and fight and I can do it for **me**, not in furtherance of someone else's goals._

**4) **_Feeling _for herself takes a lot longer. For a few months after Wayland she struggles with the temptation to just sit back and hand everything she is over to Karrde the same way Palpatine took everything she was; freedom isn't delightful, just scary, and full of pitfalls.

**5)** Then she gets the _Jade's Fire_.

**6)** It's not hard to realise that Luke and the Jedi Order are a package deal; she can't have him but reject what he's spent his life trying to build. It's equally easy to realise that the best way to accept what he does is to become a part of it. Karrde's torn between glee at the thought of having a Jedi Knight as an SIC, and irritated that it's going to take her at least two years to get that far, but there you go. Mara arranges a schedule that will allow her to train at Yavin regularly without completely giving up her duties with Karrde, and privately comms Tionne to let her know not to bother arranging separate quarters for her. Tionne, busy and distracted, tells her she can't live on the _Fire _for the whole time she's here, and Mara lets her silence speak for her, smirking to herself.

**7) **Luke has a whole speech full of objections to their new living arrangements - "unethical", "teacher-student relationships" and so on - but Mara has _whole new ways_ of shutting him up now, and anyway, as she points out to him later on, tangled up sweaty and breathless in the sheeets and each other, she thought he did away with that celibacy business. Several conversations she's had with the Rogues would suggest it's not his strong point anyway.

**8)** The worst thing about being pregnant is the sense that she's not in control of her own body anymore: there's something else inside her whose needs take priority over her wants. She remembers that feeling only too well.

**9)** But she also really wants a family, babies and all, a home and a haven of her own. Mara loves her niece and nephews, but they don't belong to her, and she wants to create - the ultimate kriff-you to the Emperor, maybe. _You broke me apart and got control over all the pieces but now look what I'm capable of: being as pathetic and normal as anyone else in the universe._

**10) **The first time Ben looks at her, her heart stands still in a way it never has before - not even for Luke.


	4. tenel ka djo

_this is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** collection of "ten things ficlets" for the various members of the Skywalker family; belongs to my swallows and amazons verse._

**Tenel Ka Djo**

**1)** She comes to the Academy for political reasons, as a show of goodwill between Hapes and the Republic, and stays because she likes it there. People are open and friendly and interested, and no one cares that she's Chume'da.

**2)** Finding her feet in a place run by a man is nevertheless one of the strangest things she has ever done. She knew it, of course, and she had been told by both her parents what to expect of Master Luke Skywalker – quiet, kind, understanding, patient, steady as a rock – but the idea of taking any of her problems, whether with studying or otherwise, to a man for help is not one she becomes comfortable with quickly.

**3)** The obvious compromise is to go to either Leia Organa Solo or Mara Jade Skywalker. And while Mara Jade Skywalker is a strong warrior and a clever, cunning woman, she is distanced enough from the Order – despite her marriage to its leader! – that Leia Organa Solo is a better choice.

**4)** A dark haired boy of her own age opens the door to her. He's about her height, with a wide smile and a snub nose.

"Hullo," he says cheerfully. "Tenel Ka, isn't it?"

For the first time since arriving here, she finds such familiarity unsettling instead of new and interesting. She draws herself up, self-confident, commanding. "I wish to speak to Leia Organa Solo."

He draws back, frowning. "Nice to meet you too," he says sarcastically – and, apparently, completely unimpressed.

**5)** "So, um," Jaina says.

"We are supposed to talk about... _girl things_, yes?" Tenel Ka says thoughtfully.

They're alone in detention together. It's a long story, and most of it was Zekk's fault.

"So I've heard. Um."

"You said that already."

"So I did."

"And you keep using the word _so_."

Jaina glares, nearly a year's worth of exasperation and distance and Tenel Ka's imperious attitude when she's uncertain catching up to her. "You're kind of a humourless stuck-up little witch, you know that?"

"I am Dathomiri –"

"You're a poor-little-rich-girl Hapan Princess who thinks she's _so misunderstood_. My heart aches, you know, it really does. All those palaces and riches and sixty planets' worth of people fawning over your every move. How _terrible_ it must have been for you."

Sixty planets' worth of people jostling for their own advantage and despising outsiders and trying to kill her, actually. Suddenly, Tenel Ka understands why she likes this place so much, men in charge and over-familiarity and everything. She feels _safe_ on Yavin.

The understanding comes in a flash and is gone just as quick but she can still use it against the other girl: "And when was the last time someone tried to assassinate _you_, you miserable piece of _rancor_ _bait?_"

"Imperial Grand Admirals were trying to kidnap _me_ before I was _even_ _born!_" Jaina shouts back, squaring up to her without flinching, and dear Force Tenel Ka wants to wipe that smug look off her face –

**6)** Han Solo marches them both to the med wing for Cilghal to treat their bruises and black eyes in grim silence, but Tenel Ka thinks she hears him laughing as the door is closing, and when she looks over at Jaina, the other girl grins at her: a lopsided smuggler's smile.

It hurts her split lip, but Tenel Ka grins back.

**7)** Eighteen is the default age of majority in both the Republic and the Consortium; the morning after the twins, Zekk, Lowie, Raynar and the others threw Tenel Ka a party of quite magnificent proportions to celebrate her birthday, her mother calls and says the nobles and Ta'a Chume are demanding her return to Hapes. Tenel Ka feels sick, but she calms her emotions with the ease of a Jedi Knight and tells Teneniel quietly that she intends to abdicate her claim to the Hapan Throne.

**8) **Afterwards, she wanders the Academy feeling like a sleepwalker, feeling disconnected from her very body. Jacen bumps into her just outside the mess hall, and catches her shoulders when he sees her face.

"Tenel Ka?"

She puts her hand on his chest to steady herself. She's never noticed the gold flecks in his eyes before.

"Jacen."

**9)** A few months later, there is another message from her mother.

_Within the year, Hapes will have another heir. Well done._

Despite her mother's praise, Tenel Ka will always feel sorry for her sibling; sorry for them, and guilty that she wasn't strong enough, that she put another child in that awful position, condemned her brother or sister to that world.

**10)** But it's hard to regret her decision when Master Skywalker says, _Rise, Knight Djo_, and Jacen kisses her exuberantly in the middle of the Grand Hall when the ceremony is finished in full view of the entire Jedi Order.


	5. tahiri veila

_this is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** collection of "ten things ficlets" for the various members of the Skywalker family; belongs to my swallows and amazons verse._

**Tahiri Veila  
**

**1)** When she first comes to the Academy, she avoids Anakin Solo and his siblings like the plague, usurpers and killers all, enemies of her people since time immemorial. But slowly, and in spite of herself, she begins to like them, and eventually she makes the water truce with them, in the privacy of her own mind, and not long after that she realises they've become true allies after all.

**2)** One day, homesick for the suns and the wind and the wide-open desert, she climbs to a jutting roof of the Academy to look at the sky; it's a darker blue than it should be, a warmer blue, with more clouds, closer somehow, kinder.

It makes her feel lost.

Master Skywalker is up there already, but he smiles at her when she hesitates and beckons her forwards. "It's all right, Tahiri. I was just... feeling homesick. Sometimes this place feels..."

"Cramped," she says.

He looks pensive. "Cramped," he agrees. "Teeming. Too much to see. Too many people. Too wet and too cold and too..."

"Green," Tahiri says firmly. "Far too green."

They grin at each other.

**3)** She breaks up with Anakin after three years because she's not Tahiri Veila anymore; she's become the Solo boy's girl instead – to the point where the HoloNet is starting to speculate on their impending nuptials. They're barely twenty.

**4)** He still invites her to his niece's Naming. Allana is a darling baby, and Tahiri loves her; Leia and Mara are lovely to her as ever, Jaina gets drunk with her, and the Skywalker girls demand stories of Tatooine, but it's Tenel Ka, rather aloof and stiff for much of their time together at the Academy, whom she finds herself suddenly getting along with best.

**5)** Tahiri never gains a Skywalker knack for mechanics, but she's a talented duellist – one of the best – and by osmosis she's picked up a love of history from Tionne, becoming an archivist and archaeologist for the Order, much like her Master.

**6)** Privately, she thinks of Kam and Tionne as the second set of foster parents she's had.

**7)** Anakin asks her to marry him ten years after they first broke up: just shows up at her Coruscant apartment in the middle of the night with his shirt gone and a bottle of Corellian whiskey in his hand.

"Tahiri," he says, "I'm ready. And so are you. Marry me."

"You've been drinking," she in surprise; he doesn't do it often.

He glances down at the bottle as if surprised to see it there. "Oh! Yeah. Whatever. The point is, I'm ready."

He looks so earnest – and so drunk – that Tahiri laughs. "Wanna bet?"

And suddenly his grin is positively vicious. "Silly girl," he says. "Don't you know better than to bet with a Solo?"

**8)** She spends two months at Tenel Ka's estate on Hapes, researching Force sensitives in the Consortium and thoroughly enjoying the food. It's barely two weeks before Tenel Ka knows as much about her as Anakin ever has; Jacen meanwhile tends to disappear to play with his daughters whenever they sit down together.

"You're domesticating him," Tahiri says, grinning.

Tenel Ka raises her wineglass to her friend. "Skywalker-Solo men seem very suited to it."

**9)** She sees _him _only once, when Cassa is born on Ossus, the labour starting a whole week before she's nominally due. It's her last day at the dig, she was planning to leave for Yavin anyway in less than two hours, and her contractions start. He's very tall, and has blue eyes like her husband's, and he holds on to her hands and promises her that everything is going to be just fine and that Anakin is already on his way here. Tahiri curses at him in Tusken when the contractions come, because it's not as if she's the only person on planet and she can in fact deal with this without falling apart and needing to be rescued, but he curses right back in the same language and doesn't leave her side and that's when she knows who he is. No one desert-born, Magh'ran or Tusken, would ever leave a woman to give birth alone. After all, what greater miracle is there in the desert than the ability to give life?

(Tenel Ka, she's fairly sure, has never seen him. Nor Jagged.)

**10)** Cassa and the twins grow up wild and free and barefoot in the dust and mud of Tahiri's latest dig and the jungles of Yavin. Desert-born twice over, of the People and the Tribes, watching them play is like watching the beginning of a brand new world.


	6. anakin solo

_this is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** collection of "ten things ficlets" for the various members of the Skywalker family; belongs to my swallows and amazons verse._

**Anakin Solo **

**1)** He's allergic to cashew nuts. This is a source of endless minor irritation for Tahiri, because it means they can never share a snack.

**2)** It's a strange thing to be a brother to twins; in all fairness, Anakin's never _really_ left out, but there's still two of them, not three.

**3)** Maybe that's why Jacen is Ben's teacher and Jaina his favourite, but Anakin is the one who understands him best.  
**  
4)** To say his relationship with Tahiri is complicated is something of an understatement: they go from childhood friends to couple to not-friends to friends to almost-couple to friends to married over the space of about fifteen years. They're never both ready at quite the same time, until, one day, they are.

**5)** He designs things in his spare time: droids, starships, power generators, lightsabres, blasters, datapads, speeders. If it has a power pack, Anakin Solo can design it.

**6)** Later on, this makes him rather sickeningly wealthy. There is a level on which Uncle Luke disapproves of this in an absent-minded, Jedi-like way, and another level on which he thinks it's brilliant. Dad just thinks it's brilliant.  
**  
7)** Anakin and Dad get trapped together on the _Falcon_ for a week once just outside of Imp space when they're attacked by pirates; they both know either Mom or the twins will find them eventually, so they shut down most of the systems to conserve power and play a lot of Sabacc. Anakin loves playing Sabacc with Dad, because he goes all loose-but-concentrated and if you give him the right cue, he lets stuff slip he wouldn't otherwise, about Mom and the Rebellion and the vague, distant, hazy memories he has of his own parents.

**8)** The memory of some of those conversations comes back to him when he's searching for a name for his son, and Dad smiles, ever so slightly, when Anakin tells him they've decided on Jon and Jessa respectively for the twins.

**9)** Of course, it wasn't Mom or the twins who found them; it was Jag Fel. That was... kind of embarrassing. (But also kind of hilarious, in hindsight.)

**10)** Grandfather drops by after the twins are born, of course. Anakin's privately certain he hasn't missed any of their births but Mom's and Uncle Luke's. He's sitting in the rocking chair by the cribs, cradling Jessa while Jon sleeps. Faintly, through the wall, he can hear Tahiri telling Cassa a bedtime story. Grandfather kneels in front of him, smiling that wide smile he's bequeathed to so many of them: Uncle Luke, Ben, Jacen, May, Allana, Davin. He looks no older than Ben and more ancient than Uncle Luke's description of Master Yoda.

"They're gorgeous."

"You're tied to us," Anakin says quietly. "Aren't you? That's why you're still here, long after the time Uncle Luke said Obi-Wan stopped being able to reach him. You're bound to all of us."

Grandfather looks at him, eyes very blue in the dimness, even in the light his spirit casts. "It's not a punishment, if that's what you're thinking."

"It shouldn't be penance, either."

Grandfather laughs softly. "You arrogant little brat. I don't suppose it's occurred to you that I'm doing this for no better reason than because I want to?"

Anakin pauses. No, in truth, that hadn't occurred to him. After everything Uncle Luke's said about Force ghosts and talks with Obi-Wan...

"What are you?" he asks his namesake, very gently.

Grandfather stands up and ruffles his hair: benediction. "_Now_ you're asking the proper questions."


	7. ben skywalker

_this is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** collection of "ten things ficlets" for the various members of the Skywalker family; belongs to my swallows and amazons verse._

**Ben Skywalker**

**1)** He inherits Anakin Skywalker's height, ending up taller than Dad, although unfortunately he doesn't get the build as well, doomed to be lanky throughout his teenage years and slender as an adult.

**2) **It's impossible to tell which side of the family he gets his temper from, but his sharp tongue is unquestionably Mara's.

**3)** Laina says his sense of humour is best described as _zany_; Jacen calls it _inappropriate_ (but then, Jasa is supposed to be strict, he's Ben's teacher) and Aunt Leia calls it _irreverent_, which... basically means the same thing, only it sounds nicer. (That's Aunt Leia for you.)

**4)** Ben and Luke have a standing argument about the model of fighter deserving of the title of Best Starfighter Ever Built; Dad of course insists on the X-Wings, but Ben cites their size and subsequent lesser manoeuvrability in comparison to older models like the Eta2 Actis Class Interceptors from the Clone Wars, and then Dad will categorically state that lack of inbuilt hyperdrive engines causes more trouble than it solves by making the fighter more manoeuvrable, and that's usually the point that everyone else leaves the room. Even Uncle Han.

**5)** He and Jysella marry on a rainy summer's morning on Yavin IV, outside in the gardens with the rich wet-earthy smell of the jungle all around them and the rain pattering on the canopies overhead. It's a beautiful day.

**6)** On Malastare, investigating a cell of Imp Loyalists with Jacen and Jag Fel, he gets shot for the first time in a crowd outside the race track. Ben's eighteen, not long to go before his Knighting, and he watches the blaster bolt hit his side with a strange, detached fascination. His clothes smoke and his ribs hurt like hell when he hits the ground, but it takes a moment for the pain of the actual wound to kick in and by then Jag's got a hold of his shoulders and is dragging him out of the way and Ben passes out.

**7)** Jag berates him for that in the aftermath, relieved and irritated at having to drag his dead weight behind cover while Jacen did all the running and shouting and arresting. Ben says he thinks Jag would have been grateful for an excuse to skip that part. Jag says it was a lose-lose situation between having Jaina kill him for not looking after her brother or her baby cousin.

**8)** Ben never truly feels safe in a crowd again.

**9) **"But I told you, I was fine," Ben says. "Everything was fine. Anakin brought me straight to Cilghal and –"

"Yeah, we know, Ben," Dad says. "We were just worried, OK?"

Ben huffs and nods and lets them fuss over him, but seriously, he'd gone to sleep and woken up again and there had been nothing remarkable about the whole experience at _all_ except for how much it had hurt and the soreness in his tummy even now. "I just wish they'd let me see it," he says. "Cilghal says she threw it out straight away, didn't even wait for me to wake up."

Mom and Dad exchange a silent look over the top of his head. "See what, Ben?" Mom asks.

Ben looks up at her. "My _appendix_," he says. "Duh. I wanted to look at it. I mean, it came outta my tummy, shouldn't I get to look at it?"

Mom's jaw drops. Then she coughs, tries not to smirk, coughs again, and finally drops into the chair by his bed, throws her head back and bursts out laughing.

Dad smirks, too, clearing his throat and glancing away. "Yeah, I think you're gonna be just fine, Benny-boy," he says in his Grand-Master-I-am-not-allowed-to-think-this-is-funny voice.

Ben rolls his eyes. "That's what I _said, _Dad."

**10)** Ben does not like afternoons at Varykino; the sun falls right on the lake and makes it all sparkly and bright and really hot, and Mama and Dad both tell him he needs to stay inside or he'll get sunburn and look like a tomato with blue eyes. Looking like a tomato is not high on Ben's list of Things To Do Before We Go Back Home.

Mama's asleep downstairs on the couch, and Dad's watching her sleep with a book on his lap and a smile Ben considers perfectly silly on his face, so he closes the bedroom door very very gently and tiptoes across to the big double bed; there are two cribs in the corner but Laney and May don't like to sleep apart. This puzzles Dad but makes perfect sense to Ben, possibly because Dad never knew he was a twin until he was awful old already, whereas Ben has known Jaina and Jacen all his life.

He climbs up onto the bed, slowly, trying not to dip the mattress and wake them up, and crawls over to them. May's on the left, on her front, and Lane is on her back, little hands clenched a bit into fists. Both of them have tufts of red hair and buttoned-up eyes and tiny little noses and fingers so small Ben's surprised they're possible.

He looks down at them solemnly for a minute, hair falling into his eyes. Then he lies down beside Laney, curving himself around her a bit.

"I think we're going to have buckets of fun together," Ben whispers.

He thinks about this: hide and seek, catch me if you can, Imps and Rebels, learning to be Jedi, beating the bad guys, telling The Story to each other under the covers late at night when all the lights are out and you can be both scared of the dark knight and the Enemy and know that you're perfectly safe at the same time, because Mama and Dad are in the other room and Grandfather will always come if you call him.

"But not till you're older," he adds. Babies, he suspects, wouldn't make very good Rebels.


	8. maira skywalker

_this is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** collection of "ten things ficlets" for the various members of the Skywalker family; belongs to my swallows and amazons verse._

**Maira Skywalker**

**1) **She never knows it, but she shares her name with her great-great-grandmother.

**2)** Dad's amazing, of course, but no one in the galaxy can hold a candle to her Mom.

**3)** She and Laina share a bed as well as a room till they're ten; then Dad puts his foot down and orders a second bed. It's unused a lot.

**4)** As adults, any day she can't talk to her sister for whatever reason is a bad day.

**5)** At first she thinks Reb Lang is a guy, but when Jaina introduces her to her new aide it turns out _Reb _is short for _Rebecca,_ Rebecca of the long brown hair and the green eyes, the acerbic sense of humour and of the most passionate sense of justice May's seen in anyone but Aunt Leia. She's working for Colonel Solo Fel part time while she finishes her law degree, and she has this ridiculously small apartment not far from the campus of Coruscant University that's hopelessly hot in summer and rather draughty in winter, lit by candles and scattered with books, and - most importantly - Laina likes her.

**6)** Reb's an only child, but her Dad is a sweetheart - except for the tiny little complication that he's not too fond of Jedi. May has never put so much effort into charming anyone in her life, and she swears afterwards to Lane - who is laughing her sorry ass off - that she never will again.

**7)** May trains with Corran Horn rather than a member of the Family; Jaina pretends to be hurt - after all, Ben's training with Jacen - but Dad encourages her, pointing out that one of the biggest mistakes the old Order made was permitting the Council to choose its own members.

**8)** Corran tells her she'd be perfect for intel: she's patient and caustic and smart and sneaky and can keep a secret like nobody's business, and after May gets her posting to Rogue Squadron she has dinner with the Antilles' and a quiet word with Iella in the kitchen afterwards and that is that.

**9)** One time an assignment takes her back to Tatooine, to Mos Espa. She goes by Maira instead of May for the first time in forever, wearing Magh'ran black and a _prosei _tied over her nose and mouth, and even though Grandfather has to help her with the accent, laughing all the while, it never really feels like a disguise.

**10) **The first time she takes Reb to a family gathering it's Ben's birthday on the _Errant Venture_, and for the first time, feeling Reb's hesitation on the threshhold, May realises just how big her family is: there must be close to a hundred people in the room. She threads her fingers through Reb's and smiles at her.

"We don't bite," she says gently.

"Ah, but you do have lightsabres."

"Don't you worry, love. I won't let Mom hurt you."

Reb goes even paler, and Maira laughs.


	9. laina skywalker

_this is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** collection of "ten things ficlets" for the various members of the Skywalker family; belongs to my swallows and amazons verse._

**Laina Skywalker**

**1)** She's not a bad duellist – no Jedi but those of very little strength in the Force can truly be said to be bad duellists – but where Ben and May will someday be the equal of Mom if not Dad with a lightsabre, Lane probably never will.

**2)** Lane is the only one of the three girls who wears skirts on a regular basis. Partly because they're comfortable, and partly because people always underestimate her when she's wearing a skirt, and she can use that to her advantage. Besides, she really likes the way her legs look in tights.

**3)** Any day she doesn't get to talk to her sister for whatever reason is a very bad day indeed.

**4)** She trains with Aunt Leia, who turns out to be a far sterner taskmistress than she is an aunt (or grandmother). Anakin laughs when she tells him this and pats her head. "Poor ignorant baby," he says. "Should have asked first."

**5)** The Jedi Order works closely with the New Republic military and the Diplomatic Corps especially, many Knights becoming NR Ambassadors, and it's a big thing when Laina passes the entrance exams for the DiCorps training. Mom is delighted, Dad quietly proud, Ben takes her drinking for the first time and May just smiles at her. _Knew you could do it_.

**6)** Whenever they're on Coruscant and Mom looks particularly put off by the thought of some diplomatic drinks party in the Palace that Dad knows he can't get out of because Aunt Leia will kill him, he looks at Lane, and she'll grin at him and go to get changed.

**7)** She picks up languages the way Anakin picks up mechanics: seemingly by instinct and/or magic. When she and May are fifteen Lane insists Grandfather teach her Magh'ran; he's pleased and flattered and not a little proud and maybe, maybe even a touch grateful. He looks a lot like Ben in moments like those.

**8)** It's common knowledge among the Solo kids – the second generation of them, that is – that Ben is in charge and May is the one with the ridiculous-fun plans, but Lane has the best stories.

**9)** Lane is a really good singer – so good that while she's doing her DiCorps courses on Coruscant she sings most weekends in a club owned by a friend of Reb's for a small stack of credits and a brilliant time, and that's where she meets Pete.

**10)** It doesn't end well. Uncle Han talks her through it and makes her hot chocolate and gets her to take Davin and Tor to the zoo for the day to distract herself; Lane sleeps in their guest room for a couple days, and by the time May and Ben are back on planet and furious about the whole thing, she's fine. Mostly fine. She'll _be_ fine, anyway.


	10. ryoo naberrie

_this is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** collection of "ten things ficlets" for the various members of the Skywalker family; belongs to my swallows and amazons verse._

**Ryoo Naberrie**

**1)** Ryoo writes books. Nothing serious, no political messages, not once is there an unhappy ending. Silly romances and funny detective stories.

**2)** Pooja accuses her of wasting her talent; Ryoo accuses her of wasting her life. She'll never be Aunt Padmé, no matter how hard she tries.

**3)** As soon as she can, she leaves Theed and moves to Coruscant. It's a wrench, she loves her home and misses it, but at the same time it's freedom.  
**  
4)** Maybe she can only write about places that are perfect if she doesn't live in one anymore. Maybe she can only write fantasies if she lives in a place where no one thinks they're truth.

**5)** Mom disapproves of Zann so much that the effort it takes her to smile at him just about cracks her face open, Ryoo thinks.

**6) **Even when he turns out to be a jackass, she doesn't care.

**7)** She doesn't hate Aunt Padmé. That's an important distinction. She blames her, but she doesn't hate her.

**8) **They're in Theed for Dad's funeral when Pooja gets a call from Jedi Master Leia Organa Solo, official Representative of the Jedi Order in the Senate, and twin sister to Grand Master Luke Skywalker.

**9)** "Didn't you ever wonder about Leia and me?" Luke asks gently, and Ryoo shakes her head. "You don't know what her death did to this family."

Luke looks at her silently, blue eyes very steady and very wise. (His boy Ben has more of Anakin Skywalker's fire, Ryoo thinks.) "I know what it did to mine," he says at last.

(She feels judged: judged, and found wanting.)

**10)** When they leave it's like burying Aunt Padmé all over again, but this time Ryoo thinks she's old enough to make peace with the past as she does so. 


	11. padme amidala

_this is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** __collection of "ten things ficlets" for the various members of the Skywalker family; belongs to my swallows and amazons verse._

**Padmé Amidala**

**1)** Anakin teaches her to cook after they're married. She's not very good at it, but he's scandalised that she can't – everyone, he says, should be able to cook for themselves – and the way he smiles when he stands behind her and guides her hands on the knife or in the dough or with the spices more than makes up for how boring she thinks it is.

**2)** After her second term as Queen is up, Padmé goes home and stays there. Sola calls it moping, perhaps somewhat scornfully. Her father offers her a job with the RRM, and her mother wants her to go to university, but –

**3)** Six months later, she's no closer to a decision. The Queen's request for her to take the Senatorial posting is an absolute relief.

**4)** For the first few weeks of her absence from public life, catching her reflection in a mirror unexpectedly would always make her jump. Getting used to her new face took a while.

**5)** A strange look crosses Sabé's face when Padmé tells her this: almost pitying. It makes Padmé's stomach drop and her throat close up.

**6)** They lose touch not long after that.

**7)** Her son's name means _bringer of light_, and she chooses it in a fit of something like desperation: this baby _is_ a blessing. It _is_.

**8)** Intellectually, she knows she's beautiful. Comes to that understanding after putting away Queen Amidala's make up for good, after one too many men and women have smiled at her over bakery counters or on the Theed public transport.

**9)** She enjoys it and she uses it, but Padmé doesn't feel it until a boy-who-is-not-a-boy looks at her and says, _so have you_.

**10) **This is – this makes no sense. Any of it. Anakin loves her. She knows he does. There has never, ever, been any doubt in her mind that this is true. Padmé knows it in the same way that she knows that planets are round and Naboo's sun is yellow and her hair is brown. It simply is, eternal as the stars themselves.

She doesn't understand why suddenly that's just _not enough_ anymore.


	12. jaina solo

_this is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** __collection of "ten things ficlets" for the various members of the Skywalker family; belongs to my swallows and amazons verse._

**Jaina Solo**

**1)** Her favourite desert is chocolate cake: rich, simple, and delicious.

**2)** She's always been a city girl, really, so she doesn't realise how much she loves Yavin too until Mom takes a position in the Senate as the official representative of the Jedi Order, and they all go back to Coruscant for a couple months. Two days after arriving, she and Mom have a fight – later on, Jaina won't even remember what it was about – and the final straw, the one thing that makes her so angry she can't see straight afterwards, is that when she runs into her bedroom she can't slam the damn door: it sithing slides.

**3)** When it comes to training, there's no separating the Solo siblings. Luke doesn't need to be told that.

**4)** It's not till Jaina's fifteen that she goes to her parents and asks advice: she'd like to ask Aunt Mara to train her.

"You're too pragmatic to put up with anyone else," Mom says, and smiles.

**5)** It never ceases to bother Jaina that both the boys get Dad's height, but she, the eldest, doesn't.

**6)** Most of her life, being the eldest is just synonymous with _being in charge_. But when Moff Panaka kisses her hand and addresses her, but not Mom, as _Lady Vader_, Jaina realises there's a school of thought out there that suggests she's in charge of a hell of a lot more than her brothers and her cousins.

("If you want it..." Grandfather says with a shrug and smiles when she glares at him.)

**7)** Jaina is the first person Maira comes to when she realises she's gay, even before Lane or Mara. It's a trust Jaina never fails.

**8)** Even after she and Jag are married, she still wakes up sometimes expecting Jacen to be sprawled asleep in a bed next to hers.

**9)** Jaina knows she's not exactly what Wynessa Starflare might have hoped for in a daughter-in-law, but she and the Baron get along famously.

**10)** In retaliation, Dad monopolises his grandsons shamelessly and without regret, but the only harm that Dav and Torin seem to take from it is the debate about appropriate times to eat chocolate cake, and Jaina remembers having that argument with Mom herself, so she figures that's basically a good sign.


	13. jacen solo

_this is a disclaimer._

_**AN:** __collection of "ten things ficlets" for the various members of the Skywalker family; belongs to my swallows and amazons verse._

**Jacen Solo**

**1)** When Jaina tells him she wants to train with Aunt Mara one-on-one like most of the other students in the Temple, he's first appalled, and then resigned.

"Things are changing," he says gloomily to Anakin.

**2)** "It's a girl thing," Uncle Luke says comfortingly. "She needs her own space right now, is all."

There is one level on which Jacen understands this perfectly well – even better than Uncle Luke thinks. There is another on which he is unconvinced, and he remains that way, to a lesser degree, for pretty much the rest of his life.

**3)** Like Anakin, he's allergic to cashew nuts. Unlike Anakin, he actually liked the things before the rash broke out.

**4)** Jacen spends most of his fourteenth year snogging Danni Quee in dark corners and being scornful about haughty Hapan Princesses in public.

**5)** "Sounds like someone I used to know," Dad says once, significantly.

Jacen's so horrified he nearly passes out.

**6)** The first time he kisses Tenel Ka, the memory makes him smile.

**7)** When Mom starts turning their wedding into a State Occasion, Jacen complains bitterly to Grandfather, who professes amusement that his staunchly Republican insurrectionist of a daughter has managed to have a bunch of kids determined to ally themselves with the most totalitarian dictatorships in the galaxy, and tells Jacen to shut up and suck it up.

**8)** Ben's only twelve the day he climbs onto the kitchen counter next to the foundations of Jacen's lasagne masterpiece and says, "Jasa, will you train me?"

"If you're sure you want me to, of course," Jacen says easily. "Pass me that tomato, will you?"

**9)** Jacen loves to fly; but he discovers, one time on Corellia at Wedge and Iella's palce, that he loves the sea just as much.

**10)** Syal joins him on the beach with her hands in her pockets, and they watch the waves together in companionable silence for a long time.


End file.
